Singing Corinthians - Sweet Home
Singing Corinthians - Sweet Home
This is the first blog entry written by Per Notini. Per runs the Gospel Friend label that is concentrating on The Golden Age of gospel music. Expect more contributions by Per in the future.
Brother Henderson/The Singing Corinthians of L.A.
The interest in black gospel has been invariably focused on the performers, as groups or individuals, or on the music as such. Seldom has there been much attention paid to the promotional or business aspects of black gospel. Yet, without the efforts of DJs, promotors, record producers and record company operators, many a great and promising group might have remained largely unknown. To be fair, researchers have recently made serious investigations into the lives of people - Hoyt Sullivan of HSE or Waymon Jones of Pitch are good examples - who instigated many gospel artists, giving them opportunities to wider exposure by recording their music, distributing their records etc. Today's blog presents the scattered facts about one such important "instigator", the little known Brother Henderson of Proverb Records in Los Angeles. I have chosen The Singing Corinthians of L.A. to represent Brother Henderson's record output, which started in the late 1950s and lasted into the early 1970s.
In the gospel field, Henderson was known as a religious DJ, a churchminister and a record producer. On his Proverb singles and LP records he always appears as the producer "Brother" Henderson. As a church man, his background is unusually intriguing. Between 1945 and 1953, he was"Duke" Henderson an r&b performer comparable to Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown. Henderson, whose real name has the initials S.C., recorded prolifically with such jazz luminaries as Lucky Thompson, Jack McVea and Wild Bill Moore for record companies Apollo, Swing Time and Imperial to name a few. But like his more famous colleague, Reverend"Gatemouth" Moore, who had a similar career, Henderson renounced his wicked blues-shouting past after a decade in the business.
Henderson's conversion from "´His Majesty of the Blues" (as he was once billed) to the simple"Brother" is probably pronounced in his own recording (from ca 1955) by"Brother Henderson's Spiritual Lambs" on the odd record R&B 1312 with titles "I Made up My Mind"/"Pass Me Not". Anyone with access to a copy of this obscure disc, please come forth on this blog!
According to the Hayes-Laughton discography, the first traces of Henderson as a gospel entrepreneur appears to be his late 1950s recordings by the Mighty Clouds of Joy, issued on his then newly launched Proverb label. Although the initial 45 disc had no. 100, Henderson added a zero number and continued Proverb in a 1000 series. The highest known number is Proverb 1045 by the Los Angeles Angels. Of the more prominent groups Henderson managed to record and release on Proverb were the Pilgrim Travelers. His office address was 5328 South Central Avenue in L.A. Around 1964 Henderson started a subsidiary label named Gospel Corner on which he released ca fifty 45s. He also issued LPs, ca half a dozen on Proverb and at least sixteen LP albums on Gospel Corner, starring such artists as Prince Dixon and the Sweet Singing Cavaliers(Cavaleers), all of which Henderson seems to have produced. His LP series survived into the 1970s on a distribution deal with Kent Records in L.A.
When"Brother" S.C. Henderson died in 1972 he left a sizeable catalogue of mostly quartet gospel. He was responsible for giving the Mighty Clouds of Joy their first break, before they signed with Peacock Records, and hence built a career of unparellelled dimensions. Although the SingingCorinthians of L.A. displayed the same powerful urgency as "The Clouds", they made only a handful of records for Henderson's Proverb, and two 45s on Song Bird and then vanished. The Singing Corinthians' style is reminiscent of the extremely dramatic singing of the early Mighty Clouds of Joy, The Gospelaires of Dayton, Ohio and other"hard gospel" gospel groups of the 1960s. The names that appear on their Proverb 45s are likely some of the members of the "Corinthians",which include Allison, D. Traylor, D. Sonder and Mose Wilson. It is possible that the group was from the San Francisco area, as there is a reference in Ray Funk's "San Francisco Bay Quartets" to a group called The West Coast Corinthians. One of the Corinthians' special features ist heir piano interludes, which is conspicuous on the high-powered Sweet Home, the A side of their first 45, Proverb 1005. I welcome comments by anyone who has further information on the Singing Corinthians of L.A. or on Brother Henderson.
Any possible connection to The Spiritual Corinthians, the Bay Area gospel group that Joe Louis Walker worked with before he came back to the blues ? I have a single by them, but can't remember the label right now.
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HI Frederic,
It is not unlikely that they are the same groups [the Singing Corinthians and the Spiritual Corinthians] with a slightly updated name. If you try to find your 45 by Joe Louis Walker we might be able to get a clue to this great but underestimated gospel quartet from the Bay Area.
Per
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I haven't been able to confirm the fact that Joe Louis Walker was actually on the single I have, but he was a member of the group at one point. The single I have is Come and go with me / Hang on soldier issued on G.K. Records 1214. The leads are given as R. Jackson and J. Williams and it was produced by T. Emerson. The adress of the label is 884 19th street, Oakland, California ! I hope this is of help...
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I use to attend the singing for this group and attended Brother Henderson funeral.
It was a lovely time in those days and that kind of music is so dearly missed.
I kept in touch with Moses Wilson for a long time and I do not know if he is alive and if he still have the same telephone number. It's been over ten years since I spoke with him.
The group was a wonderful singing group.
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